I want a tripod on my Bren.

[JonS]

And it had dawned on them the sheer futility of trying to pick off an Me109 with a static Bren gun!

Well, yeah ... that too.

OTOH, a lot of defensive measures don't depend on destroying the enemy to be successful. For example, Atlantic convoys were a good response to the U-Boat threat for a number of reasons:

1) the "herd" idea - some will get picked off, but most will survive

2) it allowed the very limited number of escort vessels to shepherd large numbers of merchant ships, so that all (well, most) merchatmen had /some/ sort of escort

3) it allowed the escorts and hunter-killers to focus their efforts in the area(s) of the convoy(s), rather than trying to search the whole Atlantic.

But the counter-intuitive reason, and for a long time the most important one, came from the reaslisation that 'winning' the Battle of The Atlantic did not depend on sinking U-Boats. Rather the relevant measure of success was transporting sufficient tonnage across the Ocean. When the ships sailed independantly, there was pretty much always a ship within coo-ee of any sub somewhere on or near the main and obvious routes. That made finding and sinking ships dead easy. By clumping the ships into convoys, each convoy became a small needle in a very large haystack, and the U-Boats had difficulty finding those needles, and it also meant there were long intervals of time and space in which there were no ships at all.

The point of that ramble is that the measure of success for VLLAD isn't really shooting down Me109s (although doing that is awesome for morale), it's in preventing the Me109s from effectively attacking whatever you're trying to protect, which is a subtly different proposition. Whether the single and twin Brens were any good in that role is a fine question ... and I don't know the answer to that. But, I have read that pilots do get twitchy at the prospect of flying into patches of sky criss-crossed by tracer, so presumably it wasn't a total waste of time.

Jon

[Affentitten]

Yes, and again much better achieved with proper AA assets than with a light support weapon on some back shed tripod!

I recall seeing a paper (or a book?) some years ago saying that the convoy system was no great success in WW2. This was based on the rate of sinkings before and after it was utilised and there was no great difference. Because obviously U-boats trying to find a single boat moving at its maximum speed was far less efficient than finding a gaggle of boats moving at the speed of the slowest member. Wish I knew where I had seen it.

[JonS]

... much better achieved with proper AA assets ...

Proper assets properly organised, yes.

I'd be interested in that paper (or book) if you ever remember what it was called. That conclusion shoulds ... odd. But, on the other hand, the pendulum of advantage in the Atalntic swung back and forth pretty hard, so depending on which periods you pick it'd be fairly easy to prove pretty much any assertion you;d care to make. On the other other hand, it wouldn't be the first or last time the official response to a crisis went something like "OMFGWTFBBQ - this is terrible, we must do something! This is something! We must do this!"

And ... in the ramble above it's entirely possible I'm confusing WWI and WWII for the key reason for the effectiveness of convoys (fewer needles in the haystack). In other words, fewer needles worked brilliantly in WWI, but when repeated in WWII it wasn't so graet, akshully

[Affentitten]

Proper assets properly organised, yes.

And ... in the ramble above it's entirely possible I'm confusing WWI and WWII for the key reason for the effectiveness of convoys (fewer needles in the haystack). In other words, fewer needles worked brilliantly in WWI, but when repeated in WWII it wasn't so graet, akshully

Ditto for me. But I think that was the thesis of the paper: that harking back to WW1 and the convoy system was a less effective reaction in WW2.

[Stalins Organ]

Fewer needles in the haystack was jsut as valid in WW2 - however better radio equipment allowed U-boats to co-ordinate tehir searches more effectively too - so in WW2 there are u-boat picket lines looking for convoys, then wolfpacks attacking them - nothing like that happened in WW1.

Also in WW1 we tend to forget that most U-boats operated around the UK, so most outgoing convoys existed only for a few hundred miles - the ships dispersing once they were out of the main area of u-boat operations. This was initially the case when convoys started in WW2 too.

You can have a look at the location of sunk ships in WW1 & WW2 here (you need to download proprietry software, but it's well worth it if you have an interest) - you'll notice that in WW1 the sinkings are clustered around hte south of England & Ireland, with none in the mid-atlantic, and only a handful on the US/Canadian coast, but in WW2 they are scattered across teh Atlantic, with many fewer close to the UK.

[Gyrene]

Leave it to you lot to turn a joking thread into an actually interesting and intelligent discussion.

You sicken me.

[Michael Emrys]

Leave it to you lot to turn a joking thread into an actually interesting and intelligent discussion.

You sicken me.

Yeah, I know. It's a drag. Where are the carefree days of yesteryear, of youth and indifference to mere facts?

*sigh*

Is there anything left in that bottle?

Michael

[Merkin Muffley]

There were huge advantages with a convoy system - and some disadvantages, but I think they were insignificant in comparison.

As JonS said, a major advantage was getting maximum benfit from your scarce escort resources. If you run convoys, then the number of merchant ships in a convoy is a function of the convoy area, whereas the escorts are a function of its perimeter (broadly). So, large convoys are incredibly efficient in escort usage compared to smaller convoys.

If you aren't running convoys at all, either your escorts are pootling about the sea on the off chance they encounter a U-boat, or they are escorting individual ships, or something else that I can't think of. Either of the first two options are pretty futile, as the former has a negligible chance of finding anything (and any U-boat encountered would have every reason just to lie doggo as it wouldn't be missing a killing opportunity) and the latter would mean any U-boat encountered would likewise forego the risk when it was likely to stumble on un-escorted merchant ships soon enough anyway.

Of course, if you are the likes of RMS Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth then you really don't need to be in a convoy as you are travelling at least 3 times as fast and become an extremely difficult target. (In passing, wikipedia suggests that the QE transferred 750,000 troops during WWII...no figure for the QM, but it would be at least as many again. Coo.)

The U-boats can only achieve victory if they reduce the amount of cargo arriving in the UK. Ultimately this can only be achieved by sinking merchant ships (although I'll come to a disadvantage of convoys that impacts here later). If merchant ships are in escorted convoys, then that's where the U-boats have to be too. Firstly, you have to find the convoy - which although easier than sighting a single ship, is significantly harder than sighting any one of 400 ships if they were not travelling in convoy. Having sighted a convoy your strategy requires that you then alert other U-boats so that a concentrated attack can be staged. This very communication introduces danger, as HF Direction Finding can pinpoint your position - which necessarily is in sight of the convoy. Notwithstanding that, a cat and mouse game ensues whereby the U-boats strung out in a patrol line now aim to congregate at a position they think the convoy will be, whilst the convoy attempts not to be there. If an attack does ensue then the U-boats have to operate in an environment that includes escorts - which typically means attacking at night. So there are a limited number of hours that an attack can take place. Compare and contrast with attacking an individual ship - if you can see it you can attack it more or less whenever you want to, and the likelihood of an escort turning up is minimal.

A mention ought to be made here of the impact of aircraft, which was obviously hugely significant. Without convoys aircraft are more or less tootling around like surface escorts - hoping to stumble upon a U-boat, hoping to attack it before it submerges. But with a convoy, your aircraft can be concentrated around the convoy track. Success is now determined not by actually sinking a U-boat, but by forcing it to submerge - so that it has little opportunity to sight a convoy, or little opportunity to reach it even if it knows its location.

The really big downside of convoys - strangely not often referred to - is their complete disfunctionality in terms of their formation and destination. Ports can only handle a certain number of ships at any given time, so a 400 ship convoy necessarily introduces delay until the last ships are loaded and form up. Likewise, at the destination port(s) 400 ships arrive more or less simultaneously and their is a mad excercise in getting the cargo off and transported away from the port so that warehouses aren't overflowing. The logistics are immeasurably more complicated compared to a steady stream of ships arriving if no convoy system was in place.

I'd be extremely surprised if there were convincing evidence that the convoy system in WWII was overall inferior to a non-convoy individual passage system. Most of the benefits of convoys were realised by some of the first use of operational research, so are mathematically proveable rather than based on gut-feeling or conjecture. Anecdotally, of course, add the identification of the "Happy Times" of U-boats typically being when convoys weren't in use.

[Stalins Organ]

How many 400 ship convoys were there???

Most were very small - there's a convoy site here that lsits a lot of sizes - of the PQ convoys to Russia for example, most were less than 15 ships - PQ 18 was the biggest at 48, and the smallest was 1 ship!

Nonetheless co-ordination of civilian ships was a time consuing activity - but I think it is possible to overstate the case.

As an aside, George Nafziger's navy reserve job was convoy co-ordination, and he spent his 2 weeks each year on that "job" researching his orders of battle!

[JonS]

From that site (Thanks Stalin)

"Vessels that could make 13 knots or more could qualify for independent sailing but the losses amongst this group were three times higher than for those travelling in convoy."

[Affentitten]

From that site (Thanks Stalin)

"Vessels that could make 13 knots or more could qualify for independent sailing but the losses amongst this group were three times higher than for those travelling in convoy."

Well 13 knots is a bit of a risk. OTOH the big troop ships like the RMS Queen Mary always sailed independently with impunity because they were capable of 25+ knots.

[JonS]

Well 13 knots is a bit of a risk.

Yeah, sure.

What caught my eye was the elevated risk of free runners, especially with respect to this earlier comment:

... a paper (or a book?) ... saying that the convoy system was no great success in WW2. This was based on the rate of sinkings before and after it was utilised and there was no great difference. Because obviously U-boats trying to find a single boat moving at its maximum speed was far less efficient than finding a gaggle of boats moving at the speed of the slowest member.

The ships moving at 13+ knots were moving at their best speed, but still suffered a casualty rate 3x that of ships moving in a convoy at 7 or 9 knots. Granted 13 knots couldn't be considered blisteringly fast by any reasonable definition, but it's still roughly twice as fast as the slow convoys.

*shrug* Dunno. There's something odd here, but without the aforementioned paper/book there isn't much room to move

Edit: The Wiki pages on Convoys and Operational Research are pretty good primers.

[Merkin Muffley]

How many 400 ship convoys were there???

None!

Apologies for the slip of brain rather than slip of finger: the Atlantic HX convoys were "typically" (if there can be such a thing considering they ran practically the entire war) 40 - 80 ships.

(There were some 100+ ship convoys - but comprising sailing ships some hundreds of years earlier).

[Merkin Muffley]

(There were some 100+ ship convoys - but comprising sailing ships some hundreds of years earlier).

HMS Victory's log in 1810 recorded that convoys were gathering in the Baltic at Hano and sailed "when they had accumulated to about 500".

The final convoy leaving that season in October 1810 numbered in excess of 1000 ships.

[Affentitten]

But plenty of those would have been mere yachts / sloops / schooners /barges etc.

[dieseltaylor]

Yachts? Seems unlikely as with speed and shallow draft thye would be hard to catch. Of course what they would be doing in th Baltic anyway I have no idea - quite a rare vessel if one is thinking of pleasure craft. Yacht rigged is another matter. : )_

Anyway for serious convoy work:

http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/

sorry should have included this good site

http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/Style/Features.html

[Soddball]

being Mr.Dorosh I guess

Ironically, despite his multiple personality issues which ought to have had him banned yonks ago, it wasn't. It was for pretending to be someone else, or rather, posting a review of a CM game pretending to be someone else. At least, that's the way I remember it. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.

[JonS]

HMS Victory's log in 1810 recorded that convoys were gathering in the Baltic at Hano and sailed "when they had accumulated to about 500".

The final convoy leaving that season in October 1810 numbered in excess of 1000 ships.

That must have been an astonishing sight!

Logistically that must have been ... challenging. 1,000 ships with, say, an average of 100 crew each - Hano had to cope with a short term surge of an additional 100,000 souls all looking for food, berverage, and, erm, companionship. And all those ships would need provisioning!

I wonder what the mechanics of moving and maneauvreing a mass of 1000 ships were in the age of sail, not to mention how the escorts would go about protecting them. At least they wouldn't have had to worry about subs, I guess

[dieseltaylor]

I think this might help get an idea of the numbers:

as to crew...hummmmmmm.....a 100 foot schooner working between New England and the Caribbean could sail with as little as 12 people; a clipper ship going round the Horn from Boston to San Fransisco in 1850 might have as many as 45...so it depends how big a ship and what route...generally ships were sailed with what seems an impossibly small number of people, working 4 hours on, 4 hours off..except "off" hours were subject to emergencies, operations like changing course and setting / taking in sail...a brutally hard life....... Source(s):

amatuer naval historian the past 40 years

and poor speler : )

[Stalins Organ]

when you think of it, the Spanish Armada was a convoy - 108 armed merchant ships with 22 escorting warships.

As for the Baltic - the Russians and Swedes had huge numbers of small ships - some of their battles had hundreds of ships per side - Eg at the battle of Vyborg Bay in 1790 the Russians had 50 ships of the line, 8 rowed "Archipelago" Frigates, 70+ galleys & another 70+ smaller vessels - the Swedes had 21 SoL, 13 Frigates and 366 smaller vessels! In the 2nd Battle of Svenskund also 1790, the Swedes had 8 SoL, 16 Galleys, and 156 sloops and gunboats, the Russians 35 SoL, 23 Galleys and 77 smaller vessels.

these 2 battles are right up there among the largest ever fought, in terms of numbers of ships involved.

[JonS]

I think this might help get an idea of the numbers:

Hmm, ok.

Well, then, say a short term surge of 20-30,000 additional souls. Hano isn't a terribly large island.

Edit: If you have access to JSTOR or the like:

The Defence of British Trade with the Baltic, 1808-1813

Author(s): A. N. Ryan

Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 292 (Jul., 1959), pp. 443-466

Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/559238

[Michael Emrys]

I think this might help get an idea of the numbers:

Those numbers are for merchant vessels. Men of war of comparable size might carry twice that number of men or more. In addition to being able to sail the ship, they had to be able to fight it. Plus, they had to be able to accept battle casualties and provide prize crews while remaining functional.

Michael

[JonS]

Michael,

yeah, but most of the several hundred vessels off Hano would have been merchantmen.

Jon

[Michael Emrys]

yeah, but most of the several hundred vessels off Hano would have been merchantmen.

Understood. I just wanted to make clear that the manning estimates given were not universal for all classes of ships. I think a first rate LoB ship had in excess of 200 men on it.

Michael

[Affentitten]

these 2 battles are right up there among the largest ever fought, in terms of numbers of ships involved.

Boats, son. Most of them would have been boats, not ships.

Emrys: A RN first rate would have over 800 sould aboard. But the relative rarity of the first rate can't be overstated. Most squadrons would have been mainly comprised of third rates and below.